Addon SDK v2; Better video support; Prompt on close & lots more.
The new Addon SDK 2 is a good idea, but the way legacy addons are being handled is just abysmal. People are working with projects that they have poured years into with addons that simply will not be updated anymore. There has to be a way to use "legacy" plugins in future construct versions. Especially as most addons just add additional objects that can simply be deleted in the editor without any issues, I don‘t see how there shouldn‘t be a safe way to continue supporting basically ALL addons that exist right now.
At the moment, projects years in the making are already at risk of being permanently broken by Construct updates. This is happening and we are getting desperate customers contacting support and sadly there's little we can do to help them. This is the problem we want to solve, and this process is necessary to ensure that in the long run - years down the line - this no longer happens.
I see, but the majority of users have not experienced such issues. I have multiple old projects that I want and need to maintain and especially for mobile games (with new requirements coming up all the time) construct updates are necessary.
Breaking all older projects to avoid breaking a few just isn’t the right move. The amount of customers complaining after this change goes through will be much bigger than now. There really has to be a way to make this change, at least, only affect newly created projects. Breaking all old ones in the future is simply no sensible solution, especially considering that the reasoning for this is to avoid breaking projects.
The problem is in the long run, pretty much all parts of the internal engine will be rewritten/upgraded/improved, which means all addons accessing internal details of the engine will be broken, and all projects using them will be broken. There is a real risk of a serious disaster in future with a great many projects being ruined. We have a difficult choice between taking disruptive action to guarantee that cannot happen any more, or continuing to allow increasing disruption from customer projects being ruined in future. I strongly believe that despite the disruption, taking action now is the right choice to ensure compatibility on a 5-10 year time scale.
Yeah, I understand…. But, there are still a lot of Addons using the old SDK that do not access internal features and will likely not cause any issues at all. I‘m using like 10+ addons that do not in any way (except from adding objects with actions/conditions) mess with the engine.
I just hope there is a way to like catch errors regarding older Addons and then maybe automatically disable them / or show the behaviors/effects/events/objects in red to indicate that they are broken etc. I assume this would not be an easy feat but if possible, definitely worth it if you could somehow isolate them from the main project to ensure integrity.